Uploaded May 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
This local public television program by KTWU 11 in Topeka, Kansas from 1980 presented some early scenes of the NSSL research Doppler radar in Norman, Oklahoma, along with topics about spotter training, the tornado warning dissemination process [of the 1970's] and disaster psychology. Intermixed is assorted tornado film clips frequently utilized in news programs and documentaries. Interviews with notable tornado forecasters and research meteorologists of the time, Fred Ostby and Les Lemon are also featured. Remastered from a 3/4" videotape and presented for historical posterity.
Video © 1980 KTVU.
This local public television program by KTWU 11 in Topeka, Kansas from 1980 presented some early scenes of the NSSL research Doppler radar in Norman, Oklahoma, along with topics about spotter training, the tornado warning dissemination process [of the 1970's] and disaster psychology. Intermixed is assorted tornado film clips frequently utilized in news programs and documentaries. Interviews with notable tornado forecasters and research meteorologists of the time, Fred Ostby and Les Lemon are also featured. Remastered from a 3/4" videotape and presented for historical posterity.
Video © 1980 KTVU.
![Tornado Alley... Wichita Falls, Texas 1964 [KAUZ-TV Documentary]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TOkB0lQlnwo/mqdefault.jpg "Tornado Alley... Wichita Falls, Texas 1964 [KAUZ-TV Documentary]
A destructive tornado was broadcast live on KAUZ television on April 3, 1964 as it moved through the northern portion of Wichita Falls, Texas. Seven lives were lost and over 100 people sustained serious injury. Sheppard Air Force Base, as well as the nearby residential neighborhood of Sunset Terrace sustained significant F5 damage.
Historically this tornado is often cited as the first ever broadcast live on television anywhere in the world. KAUZ-TV was indeed the first TV station to broadcast a tornado, but that event transpired on April 2, 1958 when a deadly F3 tornado struck the city. The news anchor in the 1964 broadcast makes mention of this misquotes the date as 1959. To my knowledge the 1958 live transmission was not preserved or saved. It was common practice in the early age of broadcast video to recycle and re-record over quadraplex videotape to save money. Fortunately six years later, engineers at KAUZ-TV did record and save the 1964 live broadcast, the bulk of it presented in this station documentary made soon after the tornado.
Additional film and news coverage of the April 3, 1964 Wichita Falls, Texas tornado is available via the Texas Archive of the Moving Image: https://texasarchive.org/2012_00678
Video © KAUZ-TV.")
